History Lesson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2000

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Beach

From the music of the Beach Boys and mid-20th century movies, such as Beach Blanket Bingo and The Endless Summer, one might assume beach culture was the exclusive domain of white people. In fact, and especially in the American South, it was thanks to longstanding segregation laws and, later, private initiatives to limit access to beaches for people of color. In her poem “History Lesson,” Natasha Trethewey opens the narrative with a photograph of a little girl in her swimsuit, posing for a picture. No big deal, except that she would have been denied access to that beach just two years before. Just two years before, she would have been confined to “a narrow plot” (Line 14) of shore.

The beach is a symbol for many things, including instability. A whale who is beached is in distress. To take the beach is a term derived from the military in relation to an invasion or usurping of territory. People stolen from Africa and forced into slavery arrived by the Middle Passage, and while they may not have landed at a beach, they did come by sea to land. A beach in the South in the 1960s, when central air conditioning was scarce, would have been a relief from the heat if you could get to it. Lack of access to the beach (and to pools) prevented children from learning how to swim, thus endangering their safety around any water. In “History Lesson,” Trethewey reminds us the phrase I like long walks on the beach is not only a romantic cliché but a statement of entitlement.

Sharpness

Edges exist in Natasha Trethewey’s “History Lesson,” and they’re sharp. In stanza two, “[t]he sun cuts” (Line 5) in “flashes” (Line 6). This imagery is the precursor to a school of “[m]innows” (Line 7) who “dart” (Line 7) and glint “like switchblades” (Line 8). The “narrow plot” (Line 14) of the grandmother’s allotment of beach is “marked” (line 15) and has edges not unlike a dug grave. There are also edges to the “sack-meal dress” (Line 17) and the actual sack from which it was made.

The photographs and their rectangular shape bring a delineated and concrete quality to memory and even to history itself. The clear language of the poem provides a kind of sharpness of perspective. Nowhere in the poem is there a luxury of sentiment. If the reader takes a sharp breath at the realization that millions of citizens were denied the basic pleasure of a picnic and a swim on the beach until 1968, it is only because the facts are presented cleanly, like the edge of a finely honed knife.

Flowered Hips

As the title of “History Lesson” promises, there is something to be learned in the story of two photographs of two women on a beach 40 years apart. Indeed, much of the data is grim, and history lessons can be difficult. However, this poem is dogged in its insistence upon joy in the face of struggle. Access to the beach may be egregiously restricted, but no one can prevent a woman from setting her hands to her hips and smiling like she doesn’t care who sees it, even if she does care.

Both the child in her “bright bikini” (Line 4) and the grandmother in her “meal-sack dress” honor their personhood and womanhood when they situate their “hands on the flowered hips” (Line 16) of their disparate garments. To place one’s hand on one’s hips is to make a strong statement of autonomy; to have those hips bedecked in flowers is simply poetic. Lineage will continue; flowers will bloom, even in adversity.

The grown woman is able to observe delight between the two generations of women and to honor the life force that existed in her grandmother under the duress of racial oppression.